Monday, May 30, 2005

Doggone Tired

A tiring weekend. Played out as a 3 day weekend. Despite not doing much on Sunday.

Friday night was all about an expedition through high waters, fallen trees and uprooted electric poles. We (Avi, Akshai and me) took almot 3 hours to travel a distance of 20 odd kms. Akshai, before joining us, had his own adventures - events that he wouldnt relish seeing published on a public domain. Typical scenes during the evening were:

Dhimant@1800: Chilli, i am on bannerghatta road. Guys get here fast, there is a huge jam.Chilli@1845: Chakku, we just got off bannerghatta road and onto the ring road. Are you ahead of us?Dhimant@1845: I am still on bannerghatta road!!!

Maga@1730: I shall catch an auto and get to vijaynagar from indranagarMaga@1815: Chilli, no auto guy is agreeing to come to vijaynagar. What is the reason?Chilli@1815: Er...I really have minimal knowledge on the internal machinations of the bangalore auto-drivers' union...

Despite these incidents, all of us (almost all of us) reached the marriage hall safely to attend the wedding reception of our friend Sudeep's sister. Turned out to be quite a mini-PESIT-reunion. From there around 8 of us headed to Java City, not out of any particular fondness for that place - atleast from my side - but because it is one of the few places that is open till 1AM. But this is a fact that seemed to be common knowledge as most of the crowd starting pouring in only after 12. We had our coffee/tea and moved out.

Speaking of coffee brings me to one of my biggest cribs about these places. Call me old-fashioned, but what these cafes purpotedly sell as coffee isnt really it. There is nothing to beat the taste of filter coffee made out of brewed decoction and served with a good lather. Even the worst Darshini makes better coffee than these people. What makes it worse is that I have to shell out 10 times the money that I would have normally paid for good coffee to drink bad coffee!Or maybe I am being too critical. It could be just that after having been brought up on the taste of pure Iyengar coffee, my tongue chooses to reject the rest of the lot. Maybe the coffee in the Baristas, Coffee Days etc is actually very tasty and I am the one with the bad taste buds.

After just 4 hours of sleep on Friday night, I had to get up early on Saturday morning. Had to arrange a few things as my parents were leaving for Madras. And just when I was going to crash again, the Devil called up and expressed interest in watching a Playback performance. So I decided to accompany him as I had heard a lot about Playback from Dhimant, but never acually seen it. My frank opinion at the end of the performance - bad! I didnt like it one bit, and thats the truth. (Sorry Chakku!) This doesnt mean that the actors did a bad job generally. But that I am not exactly a fan of such. Maybe seeing another set of actors perform might change my opinion. Maybe not.

I have been criticised as being too critical - not just about this, but many other things. But I dont see whats wrong in that? If there is anything I like, there can be no person more passionate about it than me. Similarly, I tend to be more critical about something that I do not like. I am as effusive in my praises as I am while spewing vitriol. In my opinion, it is worse to be hypocritical than hypercritical.

Saturday night involved getting the right birthday gift for Pamsy before he treated us. And I think we did a pretty good job of it. Following the Devil's plan of "experimentation" Pamsy agreed to give his treat at a Japanese restaurant, Dahlia, and the food wasnt bad - though we vegetarians had to add a lot of chilli powder and salt to infuse some spice into the food. The treat was rounded off with some dessert at Cornerhouse, a place that holds a real funny incident as far as treats go.Almost ages ago, Rajjo, Kiddo & me won a sports quiz and the prize was a Cornerhouse gift coupon worth 200 bucks. Not having been there before, we invited the entire gang for a "treat" at the place with our prize money. The 200 bucks covered just about the expenses for our team, while the rest of the gang had to pay for their ice-creams. I still remember Akshai going, "What sort of a treat is this!!!". :-)

Catching up on lost sleep was the main agenda of Sunday. In between these bouts of sopor, a few of us attended the engagement of an old school-friend of ours - "Tiger" Jagga. Thanks to Dhimant's urgent work, we had to skip lunch at the hall and instead have it at a Darshini!

The evening would have been a disaster as it looked to be heading towards my worst nightmare - dinner in solitude! This was mainly due to the Devil falling sick and being out of action for the day, Bloggard & Akshai getting some studying done, and Dhimant & Pramod having family engagements. But the day was saved by Avinash and we had a nice North Karnataka meal at a place close by. The talk centered a lot on our Infy days and the subsequent repercussions.Some happy, some sad.

I crashed only after listening to the song "Kaalai Arumbi" (from the movie Kanaa Kandaen) a million times! What a lovely song!! And I am still listening to the song as I type this...

The devil first of all deeply apologizes for not inviting the "chosen one" for the dinner in the evening .... It was honestly an impromptu thing .... Also i thought your engagement party was in the evening . My mistake

Secondly.... Wasnt the Corner House treat for the lit quiz ... Was it the sports which i conducted or someone else did ...

Thirdly .... About the "experimentation" ... thank you on your effort for Dahlia , we hope you will choose a European place next time around ...

To help your choice - i have listed a few names - which are non Italian

To Rajjo:And in my defense, I took the cheapest available ice-cream, while the 2 of you went for the most expensive ones. Tsk tsk.

To kaps:Firstly, sorry for imitating your way of replying to comments. :)And yes, Gopika is amazing in the Kaalai Arumbi song. KV Anand has some talent as far as song picturisations go.Chinna Chinna is a good song, but just as I had been dreading here is a song with a mention of "tsunami". I was wondering who was going to jump into this whirlpool first. :))

To the Devil:Thanks for acknowledging me as the chosen one. But, as Madhavan says in Anbe Sivam, "Dhideernu enna indha panivu?" :) I am lost...what impromptu thing?!Actually no European the next time. I have done enough experimentation. Lets see you guys come to MTR, and then I shall reconsider. :))